The Wedding Season

Not pictured: tubas and elephants in fancy dress

Jaipur, November 2010

Jaipur, November 2010. Standing in line at the hotel café counter, a couple from NYC heard our American accents and started in on their frustration with Jaipur. “Too chaotic.” “Worse than Haiti.” Definitely worse than Delhi. It was then I realized what cowboys we had become here, heading out into the dust and Mad Max traffic with a glee for the dust, the traffic, the hair-raising near misses in which you realize that your autorickshaw driver has just executed a subtle but last-minute move that was in his mind all along. There is one driver here, Ram, who shakes his head and yells out “Oh my god!” at the near misses, but he is doing it for comic effect, for our amusement.

Schoolboys heading home after school. They waved. Not a good example of Mad Max, etc. but I am not a gifted enough sports photographer to capture the real action.